


Candles in the Dark

by saberquill



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, Jewish Character, Loss, Psychic Abilities, Shabbat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 21:25:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10227770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saberquill/pseuds/saberquill
Summary: When their shuttle gets shot down over an agriworld, Blue and her mentor Hecate must blend in to the local populace to find a way back to their ship.  However, the small town where they find themselves may have a few secrets of its own- ones that call on a past Blue can't remember.





	1. Chapter 1

Blue crossed her arms and looked up at the shuttle. Las singes ripped across the surface, where it wasn’t filigreed with bullet holes. The flames around the engine had died down, but it would never fly again. 

“Well.” Hecate brushed herself off. “Any landing you can walk away from.”

Blue snorted. “Are you alright?”

“For the most part,” she picked at a singed strand of silver hair. “We really do need to make sure that new tech novice gets a commendation when we get back to the Invictus.”

“Not if you don’t want Mars on our ass.” Blue shook her head. “Just say the ship flew well and tell them they did good work. They’ll be happy with that.”

Hecate laughed. “Of course, fist we have to return alive. Which may take some doing…” She walked over to the wreckage, circling around it once. The expression on her face was thoughtful, closer to someone looking at an unsolved puzzle than a life-threatening emergency.

Blue nodded. “It’ll take a distress call will take weeks to reach the Invictus. Assuming we can even send one safely.” She looked up, scanning the skies. So far they were empty, but it was only a matter of time.

“It is likely they won’t take it on faith that the crash killed us.” Hecate said, noticing the direction of Blue’s glance. “We could use that to our advantage. Stage a more vivid accident. Something… showy.”

“You want flames? ‘Cause I can do flames. _Bodies,_ on the other hand…”

“That’s why I said showy. It should look bad enough that they won’t bother checking too closely.” She raised her eyebrows. “Unless you’ve lost your touch?”  


Blue ignored her. “Ok, then what?”

“Hmmmm,” Hecate hummed, “I think I noticed a village a few kilometers away while we were going down.”

Blue crossed her arms. “And how do we know that’s not where they’re hiding?”

“I know our quarry,” she insisted. “This particular sect of Slanneshi are over-the-top, even among their fellows. If the walls aren’t decorated in macramé made from human entrails, they’ve never even visited.”

“Well,” Blue sighed. “It may not be a perfect plan, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

“Why thank you. It’s good to know those twenty-five years with the Inquisition haven’t entirely gone to waste.”

“You know what I mean.”

Hecate rolled her eyes. “Well, I hope what you meant was ‘thank you Lord Inquisitor Silversteel, now I’ll kindly do as you command.’ If it wasn’t it really should be.”  


“Absolutely. Your word is, as always, my command.” Blue tried for deadpan, but couldn’t quite hide a smirk.

Hecate raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I thought so. Now, flames?”

Blue snapped her fingers. Cobalt fire sprang up around the wreck. Most of the fuel was still sitting in the tank, the flames scrabbling for purchase on the heretically reinforced metal. She focused, pushing through the chemical coating, drawing the fire in with her. The explosion swept safely to each side, leaving the shuttle a twisted husk.


	2. Chapter 2

The village was typical agriworld stuff. A cluster of houses, a few stores, and a bar set up by those who worked the surrounding fields. Everything was brown with dirt or grey with dust. Even the people looked faded. If anyone here was worshiping the dark god of excess, they were doing a remarkably good job at hiding it.

Still. Blue scanned the barroom, her eyes peeling apart every shadow. Her teeth itched. Her fingers ached. Her skin alternated between feeling too loose and too tight. She took a breath, quietly counting to herself. _18, 36, 54, 72, 90, 108…_

Hecate gave her a sympathetic smile, and tapped one finger on to the side of her head. Blue shook her head. Hecate raised her eyebrows.  
Blue sighed, and opened a mental channel.

_/Are you alright?/_ Hecate’s mind voice was warmer than her usual one. Lighter, too. Blue sometimes wondered what it’d be like to think like that. 

_/Fine/_ Blue sent.

Hecate gave her another look. Internally, Blue cursed how hard it was to lie through telepathy.

_/Just on edge/_ Blue tried again. The thought still had a sense of being unfinished. Not a lie exactly, but not the whole truth either. Hecate didn’t push her.

_/Then tell me what you see./_ She sent instead.

Blue pretended to stretch and went to get another drink. _/There’s a two-way mirror behind the bar./_ She turned around, letting her eyes wander idly. _/Two of these people are more sober than they look- there. See? That one on the end was snoring a minuet ago, but he just moved over in time to doge a stray dart./_ She sat back down. _/We’re surrounded, we’re being watched, and to top it all off our backs are to the door./_

Hecate sipped her drink, looking for all the world like someone enjoying a quiet night out. _/Good work. I saw the mirror, but I’d completely missed the drunk. Have you noticed anything interesting about the bartender?/_

Blue yawned, focusing on the mental tangle of routine and worry that was busy chatting with another patron further down the bar. After a moment, she felt the edge of something further under his thoughts—

_/He’s not a psyker,/_ Blue sent. _/But he’s had some kind of training. That’s… an impressive amount of mental shielding./_

She caught the feint impression of a chuckle in Hecate’s thoughts. _/Thought it’d be him. Most people don’t set up a safe room they wouldn’t use./_

_/So. Cultist?/_ Blue asked.

Hecate gave a mental shrug. _/Only one way to find out./_


	3. Chapter 3

I took them a few days of asking around, before they found a transport out of town they could be sure of. Meanwhile the bartender and various locals failed to manifest extra eyes, sigil-covered robes, or wickedly sharpened daggers. They were hiding something, but whatever it was seemed more or less dormant.

In fact, the majority of people didn’t even seem particularly leery of outsiders. Blue had seen towns taken by chaos. The locals tended to extremes— too wary of outsiders, or too ready with a smile that showed teeth. Here, they were met with curiosity or boredom, each cut with the all-important hint of distrust. In their eyes, Blue and Hecate were flashy off-worlders, not threats.

On the last night before they departed, Hecate sent Blue to gather one final bit of intel.

The locks on the bar were old, and easy enough to pick. Blue moved over the floorboards, steps quiet and breathing still. The shadows in the corners were dark and deep. Anyone looking out of the two-way mirror wouldn’t have seen even a hint of movement.

She approached the door to the back room. Light filtered in from the gap above the floor. It was pale and flickering. Candles, and not many of them. As she listened, there came the sound of chanting in a language she couldn’t understand. It was low and rote; there was something familiar in its rhythm.

Blue was already throwing open the door by the time she decided to react. A wall of cobalt fire sprang over the doorway, as her hand fell to her sword.

There were perhaps three families inside. The townsfolk who Blue had noticed on her first night, their spouses, their children. The bartender, sitting next to another man who’d thrown his arm protectively in front of him. They were gathered around a dinner table. At the head sat an old woman. In front of her were two candles, each one set in an antique-looking candlestick.

Blue stood in shocked silence. The gold of the candle flames warred with the light of Blue’s own fire on the terrified villager’s faces. The old woman sighed, and shook out her match. Smoke rose into the air, the smell feint but sharp. With trembling hands, she reached forward and took the glass of wine sitting near the candles. She held it aloft, looking Blue squarely in the face. Her voice was steady as spoke two sentences in a language Blue didn’t understand.

No portal tore open behind her. Nothing hammered at the edges of Blue’s mind. Every sense Blue had sharpened, had depended on to keep herself alive, told her they were nothing but words.

And yet, they spoke to Blue. It was the feeling of familiarity that had greeted her at the door, but more intense. Beyond the borders of her memory, something was calling Blue’s name.

The old woman saw Blue’s sword hand fall to her side, and took it as an indication to keep going. Beside the wine, there was an embroidered cloth, covering a lumpy shape. For a moment, Blue feared she’d miscalculated, but when the old woman tugged the covering off, it was no clump of gore or obscene weapon. Just a loaf of bread. Some local verity, Blue guessed— she couldn’t remember having ever seen it braided like that before. The old woman said another few lines in the same language. Despite herself, Blue couldn’t seem to interrupt. Eventually, she finished and there was silence again.  


“Well?” the old woman said eventually. “So Inquisitor, are you going to shoot us or not?”

“That… depends,” Blue said, not bothering to correct her. It was enough of an effort to hold herself together after the emotions the language had invoked.  


“On what?” The old woman’s eyes flicked to the table cloth. She probably had a gun— most people in towns like this did. Still, Blue couldn’t quite bring herself to draw her sword.

“Well, what are you doing?” Blue knew the question sounded stupid the second it left her mouth, but didn't let her annoyance show in her face.

The old woman smiled slightly. “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know? My mother taught it to me, and her mother taught it to her, and so far back none of us can remember. Now I do it with my children.”

“But what _is_ it?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure. Every fifthday, we eat together. We have bread, like my mother made it. We have wine. We light these candles. We say the prayers.”  
“Do— do you know what language it is?”

The old woman shook her head. “We don’t even know what they mean. My grandmother always said it was a secret, but I think her mother died before she could tell her.”  


“Then why hide it?” Blue asked.

“Because if it wasn’t something to hide, why hide it for so long?” The old woman gave Blue a wry look. “Besides. It would look pretty bad to the priests, don’t you think?”  


“But why do it?" Blue was surprised at the longing knifing it’s way into her voice. "Why risk—”

“Inquisitor,” the old woman shook her head “sometimes, you get a gift you don’t understand. My mother and her mother, and all the mothers in my family gave me this. So do what you have to, but I won’t reject that.”

Blue looked around one more time. Her duty was clear. There was an active cell of Slaaneshi on world. Even homely, harmless rituals like this could lend power to the dark gods. They were innocent— but innocence, Blue had been told, proved nothing.

An infant in one of the women’s arms started crying. She looked at Blue, pleadingly. Blue nodded. The woman carefully lifted a flap of her dress and began to nurse the child. Softly, she hummed a tune. It was wordless, the few syllables Blue caught were nonsense repetitions of sounds, like “yi-di-di.”

Blue lifted a hand to her face, and found that she was crying. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised. The flames died away, flickering harmlessly into the floor. In the flickering candlelight, the old woman smiled.

Later, Blue stumbled back to the inn where she and Hecate were staying, bleary-eyed and exhausted. Hecate was still awake, sitting up in bed reading some tome or other and pausing every so often to make notes.

“I take it they weren’t cultists?”

Blue shook her head, falling into the other bed without bothering to remove her boots.

Hecate raised her eyebrows. “Long time to be gone for no heresy.”

“The bartender was staying late.” Blue mumbled, her face pressed into the pillow. “Had to pretend to be drunk as an excuse. He suggested another round. Throne, the stuff they have around here is rot-gut.”

Hecate sighed. “And there was no sign of anything suspicious?”

“Nah, it was just a storeroom.” Blue groaned. “Ma’am, _please._ Let me make my report in the morning; if I keep talking I’m going to throw up.”

“Of course, sleep,” she set her books on the nightstand and shutting off the light. “You need it, after a long night of protecting the innocent.”

Blue had never been so grateful for the cover of darkness.


End file.
